What happier haunt could the gods allot
For loftiest musing to sage or bard? --
Yet I would that this upper verandah did not
Look down on my beautiful Neighbour's Back-yard!
I stir the afflatus: Descend, oh ye Nine!
Let the crystalline gates of the soul be unbarred!
No. My thoughts will keep running in one fixed line --
The clothes-line that hangs in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Let me gaze on the bills; let me think of the sea;
Of the dawn rosy-fingered -- the night silver starred:--
(What dear little feet must the owner's be
Of those stockings that hang in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Let me tune my soul to a measure devout:--
Ah, the musical mood is all jangled and jarred,
While things with borders, and things without,
Keep fluttering down there in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Are the True and the Good and the Beautiful dead,
That I win not one gleam of Pierian regard?
(Does she suffer, I wonder, from cold in the head? --
Such a lot of mouchoirs in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Comes the fit. While it sways me, high themes would I sing!
Prometheus! Achilles! Have at you! En garde!
Alexander the Great -- (oh that I were a string
On that apron hung out in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
I will shut my eyes fast -- I have hit it at last
Now my purest Ideals flit by me unmarred;
And odors of memory rise from the past,
(And an odor of suds from my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Ah, yes, when the eyelids together are prest,
Every vestige of earth we throw off and discard.
(These are flannels, I think. Is she weak in the chest? --
There! I'm looking again at my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Since the Muses back out, let Philosophy in:
Let me ponder its problems cold and hard.
Ah, Philosophy dies in a celibate grin
At that bolster-case down in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Oh shame on my rapidly silvering hairs!
Oh shame on this veteran battered and scarred!
I to be witched with these frilled-affairs!
Confound my neighbour! Confound her Back yard!
Why seek for the blossoms of Auld Lang Syne,
When the boughs where they budded are blasted and charred? --
Faugh! the whole concern's too alkaline --
It's washing day in my Neighbour's Back-yard.
First published in The Queenslander, 18 September 1875;
and later in
Convict Once and Other Poems by J. Brunton Stephens, 1885; and
The Poetical Works of Brunton Stephens by J. Brunton Stephens,1902.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library, Old Qld Poetry
See also.
For loftiest musing to sage or bard? --
Yet I would that this upper verandah did not
Look down on my beautiful Neighbour's Back-yard!
I stir the afflatus: Descend, oh ye Nine!
Let the crystalline gates of the soul be unbarred!
No. My thoughts will keep running in one fixed line --
The clothes-line that hangs in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Let me gaze on the bills; let me think of the sea;
Of the dawn rosy-fingered -- the night silver starred:--
(What dear little feet must the owner's be
Of those stockings that hang in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Let me tune my soul to a measure devout:--
Ah, the musical mood is all jangled and jarred,
While things with borders, and things without,
Keep fluttering down there in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Are the True and the Good and the Beautiful dead,
That I win not one gleam of Pierian regard?
(Does she suffer, I wonder, from cold in the head? --
Such a lot of mouchoirs in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Comes the fit. While it sways me, high themes would I sing!
Prometheus! Achilles! Have at you! En garde!
Alexander the Great -- (oh that I were a string
On that apron hung out in my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
I will shut my eyes fast -- I have hit it at last
Now my purest Ideals flit by me unmarred;
And odors of memory rise from the past,
(And an odor of suds from my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Ah, yes, when the eyelids together are prest,
Every vestige of earth we throw off and discard.
(These are flannels, I think. Is she weak in the chest? --
There! I'm looking again at my Neighbour's Back-yard!)
Since the Muses back out, let Philosophy in:
Let me ponder its problems cold and hard.
Ah, Philosophy dies in a celibate grin
At that bolster-case down in my Neighbour's Back-yard!
Oh shame on my rapidly silvering hairs!
Oh shame on this veteran battered and scarred!
I to be witched with these frilled-affairs!
Confound my neighbour! Confound her Back yard!
Why seek for the blossoms of Auld Lang Syne,
When the boughs where they budded are blasted and charred? --
Faugh! the whole concern's too alkaline --
It's washing day in my Neighbour's Back-yard.
First published in The Queenslander, 18 September 1875;
and later in
Convict Once and Other Poems by J. Brunton Stephens, 1885; and
The Poetical Works of Brunton Stephens by J. Brunton Stephens,1902.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library, Old Qld Poetry
See also.
